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Originally Posted by dragon wench Okay, probably a really stupid question.. but I'm not very tech-oriented..
How does a smaller cache impact the way a machine runs, particularly with regard to gaming? Is the speed badly enough compromised to make it a poor choice? |
Withouth being to techincal then Cache is "simply" a form of memory.
But as opposed to ordinary RAM this is integrated as circuts directly into the CPU, thus it is extreemly fast (compared to ordinary RAM and harddrives which are considered slow).
There are various names of this cache, the Level 1 and Level 2 labled you'll see on CPUs, and generally and non-techincal speaking. Level 1 is the fastest and the one the CPU will look in first - then level 2. If the CPU then doesn't find the information it looks for it will use the RAM and Swap drives for storage, which as said - are slower forms of storage then the cache.
Thus with a higher amount of cache, the CPU can store more information in the cache before it has to utilize RAM and/or harddisk swap drives, making it much faster to do calculations.
Thus for better performance - high cache is always preferable. A good amount of L1 and L2 cache can help the speed with which the CPU does its calculations.
I do not however know how big (procentuel on equal CPU "speed") a difference it would make in for instance gaming, but it does have an impact.